Check our brand new site TheRetroSite , although YouRememberThat will remain for quite some time we expect this new site to be our new home. Click over and create your account on the new mobile friendly and flexible site today!

The worst sports scandal in American history revolved around the 1919 Chicago White Sox. The White Sox won their second American League pennant in three years and were heavily favored to beat the National League champion Cincinnati Reds in the best-of-nine World Series. But, lo and behold, the Reds won in eight games. Reporters and baseball insiders who watched the games knew something was amiss. White Sox pitchers Eddie Cicotte and Lefty Williams, the team's two aces, combined for all five Chicago losses. Their pitches seemed to lack zip. The White Sox also made uncharacteristic errors in the field and amateurish mental mistakes. It took nearly a year for evidence to surface that the eight of the White Sox had thrown the Series for gamblers. The press dubbed them the 'Black Sox,' and the eight were banned from pro baseball. Among them was the great Shoeless Joe Jackson, whose .356 career batting average is the third best ever. In order to restore the public's faith in Major League Baseball, Judge Kenesaw M. Landis was hired by the 16 team owners to serve as the sport's commissioner. He was given a lifetime contract and extraordinary powers. The White Sox did not play in another World Series until 1959. Tags:baseballBlackSoxscandalAdded: 20th November 2009Views: 1266Rating:Posted By:Lava1964

"Party All the Time" was a single originally recorded by comic actor Eddie Murphy in 1985, written and produced by Rick James and Kevin Johnston. The single reached #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was the only major hit of his music career. Rick James also provided some vocals for the song.
-YOU REMEMBER THAT??? Tags:originallyrecordedcomicactorEddieMurphyAdded: 22nd November 2009Views: 1205Rating:Posted By:mia_bambina

One of the most recognizable characters in the Our Gang comedies was William (Buckwheat) Thomas who was a troupe member from 1934 until the series concluded in 1944. Thomas recalled his mother taking him to a tryout at age three--where he was quickly added as a minor character. He was being groomed to replace Stymie as the Gang's black character. Like Farina before him, Buckwheat's gender was a bit of a mystery at first, but he eventually grew into a male role. His trademark 'Otay!' was part of his garbled-English shtick. His wardrobe usually consisted of a striped shirt, a floppy hat, and pants held up by just one suspender. Thomas made an easy transition out of showbiz. He worked as a film laboratory technician for years and also served in the Korean War. (His gravestone wrongly lists him as a WWII veteran.) In August 1980 he was moved to tears after he was given a standing ovation by fans at an Our Gang reunion. Two months later Thomas died suddenly of a heart attack at age 49. Remarkably, Buckwheat got plenty of posthumous fame. Comedian Eddie Murphy had an ongoing Buckwheat-impersonation routine on Saturday Night Live. In 1990, the ABC news program 20/20 aired a segment about a man working in a Tempe, Arizona grocery store who claimed to be Buckwheat. The network was flooded with calls from knowledgeable Our Gang fans who pointed out that the real Buckwheat had died a decade earlier. An angry Spanky McFarland appeared on television to denounce the fraudster, a man named Billie English who had been masquerading as Buckwheat for 30 years. The producer of the 20/20 segment was summarily fired for his shoddy research. Buckwheat's son sued ABC for negligence. Tags:OurGangBuckwheatThomasAdded: 2nd December 2009Views: 3935Rating:Posted By:Lava1964

Baseball losses don't come much tougher than the one suffered by Harvey Haddix of the Pittsburgh Pirates on May 26, 1959. Pitching in Milwaukee's County Stadium against the defending National League champion Braves, the diminutive left-handed Haddix set down batter after batter. The trouble was that Milwaukee's Lew Burdette was fashioning a shutout too. After nine innings the score was tied 0-0, but only Haddix was perfect. Haddix got through 12 innings unscathed. However Milwaukee's Felix Mantilla reached first base on a throwing error by Pirates' third baseman Don Hoak to open the bottom of the 13th inning. Mantilla advanced to second base on a sacrifice bunt by Eddie Mathews. Hank Aaron was intentionally walked to set up a force play. Joe Adcock blasted an apparent home run to end the game. Aaron foolishly left the basepath after Mantilla scored. Adcock was called out for passing Aaron and only got credit for a double. The game officially went into the books as a 1-0 Braves' win. Haddix went into the books as the man who retired 36 straight batters from the start of a game--yet lost. Tags:HarveyHaddixbaseballpitcherAdded: 5th June 2010Views: 1034Rating:Posted By:Lava1964

Eddie Fisher, whose huge fame as a pop singer was overshadowed by scandals ending his marriages to Debbie Reynolds and Elizabeth Taylor, has died. He was 85.
His daughter, Tricia Leigh Fisher of Los Angeles, told The Associated Press that Fisher died Wednesday night of complications from hip surgery at a hospital in Berkeley. Tags:Added: 24th September 2010Views: 1858Rating:Posted By:Old Fart

In the late 1950s, the premier showbiz scandal focused on singer Eddie Fisher dumping wife Debbie Reynolds for Elizabeth Taylor. Fans could not get enough news--real or otherwise--about the messy love triangle, as this period gossip magazine cover indicates. Fisher, who had been a leading pre-rock-and-roll teen idol, was perceived as a villain. His career went into an immediate tailspin and never recovered. Tags:EddieFisherLizTalyorDebbieReynoldsAdded: 28th September 2010Views: 1400Rating:Posted By:Lava1964

CNN) -- Barbara Billingsley, who wore a classy pearl necklace and dispensed pearls of wisdom as America's quintessential mom on "Leave it to Beaver," has died at age 94, a family spokeswoman said Saturday.
The actress passed away at 2 a.m. (5 a.m. ET) Saturday at her home in Santa Monica, California, after a long illness, spokeswoman Judy Twersky said. A private memorial is being planned.
"America's favorite mother is now gone. I feel very fortunate to have been her 'son,' " actor Tony Dow, who played Wally Cleaver, said in a statement. "We were wonderful friends and I will miss her very much. My deepest sympathies to her sons, Glenn and Drew, and her entire family."
Actor Jerry Mathers, who played Theodore "Beaver" Cleaver, spoke of Billingsley's talent during a 2000 appearance on CNN's "Larry King Live."
"Barbara was always a true role model for me. She was a great actress," he said. "And in a lot of ways ... we kind of stifled her, because her true talent didn't really come out in 'Leave it Beaver.' She was like the straight man, but she has an awful lot of talent."
The actress won a new legion of fans in a brief but memorable scene in the 1980 send-up movie "Airplane."
"Oh, stewardess. I speak jive," Billingsley said in her role as a passenger attempting to comfort an ill man on the flight.
From the moment its catchy theme song sounded in black-and-white TV sets of the 1950s, "Leave it to Beaver" enthralled Americans during a time of relative prosperity and world peace. Its characters represented middle-class white America.
June Cleaver dutifully pecked her husband, Ward (played by the late Hugh Beaumont), when he came home to learn about the latest foibles -- nothing serious -- committed by Beaver and Wally.
The parents would dispense moral advice to their sons. The boys' friends included Lumpy and the obsequious Eddie Haskell, who avoided trouble and often buttered up Ward and June.
"That's a lovely dress you're wearing, Mrs. Cleaver," Eddie would typically say to Billingsley's character.
Perhaps fittingly, "Leave it to Beaver" was canceled in 1963 on the eve of the JFK assassination, the Vietnam War and the tumult of the 1960s.
Born December 22, 1915, in Los Angeles, Billingsley began her career as a model in New York City in 1936. She was under contract to MGM in 1945 before becoming a household name with the launch of "Leave it to Beaver" in 1957.
Billingsley is survived by her two sons, Drew Billingsley of Granada Hills, California, and Glenn Billingsley of Phillips Ranch, California.
Asked once to compare real-life families to TV families, Billingsley responded, "I just wish that we could have more families like those. Family is so important, and I just don't think we have enough people staying home with their babies and their children."
Tags:LeaveittoBeaverBarbaraBillingslyAdded: 16th October 2010Views: 985Rating:Posted By:Carl1957

A hunchback or dwarf was once considered by sports teams to bring good luck. Many professional baseball teams had such a mascot. Hunchbacks were considered particularly lucky. Many players rubbed the mascot's back before batting, believing a hit was sure to follow. Eddie Bennett was such an object of luck, but he also became much more to the teams he worked for.
From the beginning of his life, Eddie Bennett seemed to catch bad breaks. A childhood accident left Eddie with a crippling back injury stunting his growth and leaving him hunchbacked and permanently child-sized. His life was further disadvantaged when both his parents perished in the 1918 influenza epidemic. Crippled and orphaned, things looked bleak for the young kid from Flatbush. Eddie was a big baseball fan and frequently hung around the Polo Grounds. Happy Felsch of the Chicago White Sox took notice of the boy. Impressed by his cheery demeanor, the Sox adopted Eddie as their good luck charm. Eddie travelled with the team and they won the 1919 AL pennant. Eddie returned to Brooklyn for the 1920 season--and Brooklyn won the NL pennant that year. During the 1920 World Series, after winning two out of three games at home, the team left Eddie behind when they went on the road to play Cleveland. Without their lucky charm they promptly lost four straight games and the best-of-nine series. Eddie, dejected and offended, left the team in disgust.
In 1921 Eddie latched onto the New York Yankees. Although still a good luck charm, Eddie established himself as a true professional batboy. He not only performed the typical duties of batboy, he also handled other tasks, enabling the players to focus on the game. He was a paid employee of the Yankees and took his job very seriously. Eddie ran errands for the players, procured their favorite foods, and became their confidant. Eddie was privy to every rumor and scandal regarding the Yankees during the Roaring Twenties but he kept his mouth shut. When Urban Shocker was suffering from serious heart problems late in his career, he roomed with Eddie. He honored the pitcher's wishes and kept Shocker's health issues from his teammates.
Babe Ruth in particular became close to Eddie. Ruth and Bennett would enter the field early in batting practice and perform a comical warmup show. The much larger Ruth would continually throw the ball out of Eddie's reach, eventually backing him up to the backstop. Not one Ruthian homerun went by without Eddie being the first to shake his hand upon touching home plate. If you look at any team picture from 1921 to 1932, there is Eddie, front and center with a big wide grin on his face, the envy of every boy in America.
In the 12 seasons Eddie was with the Yankees, they won seven AL pennants and four World Series. All this changed early in 1932 when Ediie was hit by a taxicab, breaking his leg. Due to his other health problems the injury healed slowly. By the end of the year it was clear that Eddie's fragile health was failing. Unable to perform his duties with the Yankees, he was nevertheless financially supported by team owner Jacob Ruppert for his past services to his club. But not being around the team anymore and the severe pain he suffered daily because of the accident took its toll on Eddie. He began drinking heavily. He passed away in 1935 after a three-week bender, surrounded in his room by mounds of priceless memorabilia from his years as baseball's most famous batboy. Tags:baseballmascotEddieBennettYankeeshunchbackAdded: 22nd February 2011Views: 1436Rating:Posted By:Lava1964

After being part of two successful TV series in the early 1970s, Nancy Walker had two sitcoms in which she played the starring role cancelled in the same 1976-77 TV season. In September 1976, The Nancy Walker Show premiered. In it Walker played talent agent Nancy Kitteridge who was learning to live with her husband who had been away at sea for most of their 29-year marriage. The show bombed and was cancelled before New Year's Day. Undeterred, ABC cast Walker in another sitcom. This time she played Howard Cunningham's visiting cousin Nancy Blansky from Las Vegas on the February 4, 1977 episode of Happy Days. Blansky's Beauties premiered eight days later.
In this show Nancy Blansky was a Las Vegas showbiz vet and current den mother to a bevy of beautiful showgirls. In addition to keeping order in the chaotic apartment complex where they all lived, Nancy staged the girls' big numbers at the Oasis Hotel. (Strangely, the Happy Days episode on which Nancy first appeared took place circa 1960, yet Blansky's Beauties was set in 1977.) Sixteen-year-old Scott Baio played the role of a "12-year-old going on 28." Eddie Mekka from Laverne and Shirley was also part of the cast. Blansky's Beauties ran for just 13 weeks before being axed. Recalled once critic,
"This show had every 1970s teeny bopper element aimed to appeal to the lowest intellect and thus make it a hit--except this time cute boys and inane, jiggly, dumb blondes were not enough to cover for horrible scripts, contrived situations, bad acting, and unbelievable plots. The show tried to be a spin-off/tie-in to Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley (or at least ride on their successes) by utilizing actors - most notably Eddie Mekka and Scott Baio - from those shows and making the title role the cousin of Happy Days' Howard Cunningham. Having Nancy Walker as its star, scantily-clad bimbos wiggling around the set, and pretty boy co-stars to elicit screams from young girls in the audience, however, could never have saved it from itself.
This show is a best-forgotten footnote to bad television."
Tags:BlanskysBeautiessitcomflopABCspinoffAdded: 20th August 2011Views: 2537Rating:Posted By:Lava1964